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<title>i cut the arrow from your neck, stretched you beneath the tree by missdulcerosea</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23586328">i cut the arrow from your neck, stretched you beneath the tree</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdulcerosea/pseuds/missdulcerosea'>missdulcerosea</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, actually more like SUFFERING and MORE SUFFERING</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:54:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>894</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23586328</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdulcerosea/pseuds/missdulcerosea</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The doctor tries, and tries, and tries.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Faust/Mephistopheles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i cut the arrow from your neck, stretched you beneath the tree</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He leaves, blood-soaked, and they find Valentin’s body later.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> If Faust had stayed a little longer he knows he would have been able to study Valentin’s still fresh corpse: The hands frozen in reaching up for Faust’s throat, dark blue eyes glassy and empty. He remembers the split skin and fabric of Valentin’s stomach, the blood oozing out from the broken muscle and coating him in dark red. Yet <em>he </em>was the one who’d gotten shot in the throat.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “My dearest doctor,” Mephistopheles croons in a voice as smooth as oiled silk, “What troubles you?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Everything, Faust wants to say. Gretchen—my love, although can I even call her that? She is only my love because that is what you molded her into—is condemned and dead. Her brother is gone. And you hold my soul in your hands, waiting till the day I am destined to die. I will not join their ranks, though: Perhaps I will be crammed into a coffin and left to decompose in the earth, but in death I will truly become your puppet.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Faust, though, was the one who took Mephistopheles hand. He’d taken a bite of the apple, crisp and tart with that honey-sweet aftertaste on his tastebuds. And that was when Mephistopheles missed the apple and Faust has an arrow lodged in his throat.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He walks through the streets. The city is gray with the still-fresh dawn, and new fear grips Faust’s heart. He tries to blend in—a shadow on the city streets, flitting about so that none see him. He knows how useless it is, though. He will be seen and might be dealt the same fate as Gretchen, and if Mephistopheles feels inclined maybe that fate will be delayed. Mephistopheles made him stay for the hanging. Look upon your handiwork, dearest Doctor, he seemed to say, look at what you have done. I let you have one taste of knowledge, see the barest hint of green on the other side of the grass, and you used it not for the purposes you intended to. Look upon your folly, Doctor, see how Gretchen’s neck snaps with a sickening crunch when she’s hung from the gallows. You did not know. But it is all a part of my game you play.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Gretchen and Valentin do not leave him behind. Faust thinks of the maiden Ophelia from <em>Hamlet</em>, how serene she was even as she was swallowed up by water, blonde (he always thought her to be blonde, with hair like Gretchen’s) hair tangled with flowers as she sinks into the river’s depths. But Gretchen does not look like that in his dreams. His Ophelia comes for him in nightmares, with her hair tangled and face dirtied, nails cracked and struck with black dirt and if he looks hard enough he can catch a glimpse of the splintered bone of her now broken neck. And she <em>smiles</em> as sweetly as she did when she walked the earth. Valentin is there, too, smiling in rictus. Faust’s rapier is speared through his belly and though the blood paints his hand and torso he knows that Valentin is happy. Because he was right.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “You lied,” Gretchen whispers. She wraps her arm around Faust from behind.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> (He knows the eyes are watching him. He knows he’s here to be jerked about as another puppet in this grand play engineered by the Devil.)</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “You lied,” Valentin says. He echoes Gretchen’s words and Faust is paralyzed. He does not feel fear anymore but simple fatigue. He might as well be dead already, caught up in this doomed dance with Mephistopheles.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Sometimes if he screams loud enough Mephistopheles offers him something like comfort. The first night after Gretchen is killed is the hardest and Faust wakes up ready to vomit. Mephistopheles is there at the rustle of a curtain.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “Faust, I—”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He throws up on the floor. The sour taste prickles at his throat.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “Gretchen—Valentin—They—dream—”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “Oh, my poor, bright doctor. How I have broken and bruised you so.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He shivers even as Mephistopheles takes him in his arms, long hair ticklish on Faust’s face. Tomorrow he will rise and pretend to go to church, ignore Wagner’s pestering. But for now the moon is full and sheds pearl-like light into his room, and he has naught but the Devil to turn for comfort. Sometimes he thinks Mephistopheles cares but then he feels the clawed nails stroking at his cheek, the rumbling beneath the Devil’s sweet nothings and words dripping with honey.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “How pathetic you are,” Mephistopheles muses, “So unprepared for what more is to come that you turn to the very person who brought you here to for reassurance. My poor, poor Doctor.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Faust willingly lets Mephistopheles deliver a kiss to his open mouth, heavy-lidded eyes closing. His breathing slows, he loses himself in cold comfort. Faust tells himself he has accepted what has happened. But amidst the numbness he tries to plunge himself into are a writhing mass of feelings that bubble up and threaten to choke him: Anger. Despair. Fear. Relief.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “It will get better, it will get better.” Mephistophele’s voice is soft when he lets Faust lay his head down again.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> (For you, Devil, Faust thinks. Not for me.)</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> When Faust wakes up that morning the anger he felt is gone.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> If anything, he feels nothing at all.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>oh, i love this play dearly. that's all i have to say.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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